Tim BontempsESPN3 minutes to read
PHILADELPHIA — After 10 years in Toronto as an assistant and head coach, Nick Nurse said he’ll need “a few weeks to figure out where I am” at the end of what he called “a difficult season from many points of view.”
“He’s had some serious injuries early on with some key players,” Nurse said before facing the Philadelphia 76ers at Wells Fargo Center. “I thought we were done with that for a while… So, yeah, I think the trade deadline, I don’t know if a thousand rumors, 999 of them about us, sounded like that.” It was probably about as much fun as it gets. »
When asked where his head was, the nurse said he was focused mainly on two things.
“First, I think when this season is over, we’ll take stock of everything, and even personally, I’ll take a few weeks to figure out where I am, you know? The nurse said. “Like I said, where’s my head. And look at the relationship with the organization and everything. It’s been 10 years for me now, and it’s been a pretty good run. I don’t know, in those 10 years we have to be ahead in wins with anybody in the league. “I don’t even know where it is, but we’ve had a lot of great seasons.
“And then now my mind is to make this season as long as possible. This team needs playoff experience. That’s where I’m at right now…finish those six, see where we go down, see if we can’t.”Go up a place or two in the standings, then give them hell in the playoffs and see if we can get into a real series and go from there. »
When asked if that meant Nurse had considered his future outside of Toronto after this season, he replied no.
He said no.” “I am concentrating on this work, of course, and on this match mainly. But I think 10 years is a good time to sit down and think a little bit. So I think we’ll do all of that when the season is over. . “
Nurse, 55, has been the Raptors’ head coach since the start of the 2018-19 season and served as an assistant under Dwane Casey with the franchise for the previous five years.
Since taking over, Nurse has posted a 224-160 record as head coach of the Raptors, leading them to the 2019 NBA Championship in his first season in Toronto. The team has made the playoffs in three out of four seasons.
The Raptors are seventh in the NBA in wins over that period and second behind the Golden State Warriors since the start of the 2013-14 season.
This season, Toronto hovered around . 500 for the first two months of the season before dropping from December 10-18 to February 1.
Since then, however, the Raptors have gone into Friday’s game 15-8 — including posting the third-best defensive rating in the league in that span — to enter Friday’s game tied with the Atlanta Hawks for eighth in the Eastern standings. That streak also coincided with Toronto acquiring center Jacob Boltel — who was sent by the team to the San Antonio Spurs as part of a deal with Kawhi Leonard in the summer of 2018 — from San Antonio at the deadline to give them the necessary size at the plate.
“My background and my coaching is a lot of people come and go, little leagues and Europe and so on and basically you have to get out there and do a good day’s work no matter what happens, make a great game plan what we can do,” said a nurse, when asked why things happen. Do it better, be healthier, be more connected, play harder, start shooting more shots, and all of those things add up, because there’s also a lot of very close misses.
“So we’re not a million miles apart. So shape up some stuff, tweak some stuff and go from there.”
